Good data should inform our decisions. Even a really stressful decision. This site demonstrates this beautifully by providing UK pediatric hospital survival rates to aid the parents of children undergoing heart surgery.
The information is translated for laypeople. They present statistical ideas that you and your students have heard of but without a lot of statistical jargon. The data is also explained very clearly. For example, they present detailed hospital survival rates, which include survival ranges:
So, it contains data from a given period. It includes the actual mortality rate and a range likely to have a valid mortality rate. So, essentially, they are confidence intervals but not precisely confidence intervals.
In addition to this more traditional presentation of the data, the survival ranges are explained in greater detail in a video. I think this video is helpful because it describes the distribution of the sample mean and how to use them to estimate actual survival rates.
Examples for the classroom:
-Sample v. population: A 30-day survival sample rate is just a sample and does not necessarily reflect the True outcome data.
The information is translated for laypeople. They present statistical ideas that you and your students have heard of but without a lot of statistical jargon. The data is also explained very clearly. For example, they present detailed hospital survival rates, which include survival ranges:
In addition to this more traditional presentation of the data, the survival ranges are explained in greater detail in a video. I think this video is helpful because it describes the distribution of the sample mean and how to use them to estimate actual survival rates.
Examples for the classroom:
-Sample v. population: A 30-day survival sample rate is just a sample and does not necessarily reflect the True outcome data.
-Standard Error: They describe that smaller hospitals with fewer surgeries have more significant variability in survival rates than larger hospitals with more surgeries.
Variability: They explain that the data contains variability because all patients have different pre-existing conditions/personal odds of survival.
-Confidence intervals-ish: When they describe a given survival rate, they use that within the context of that hospital's predicted range. These "predicted ranges" are confidence intervals. They never call them confidence intervals because that phrase means nothing to a layperson.
-When computing the predicted range, they create multiple models of possible samples that could have been collected. So the sampling distribution of the sample mean.
-The blue bar is the 95th percentile. The gray bar is the 99.8th percentile.
-Again, data shouldn't be collected and left on a shelf or in a difficult-to-follow medical journal. It should be shared with the people who need it the most to make an informed decision about their child's health.
Variability: They explain that the data contains variability because all patients have different pre-existing conditions/personal odds of survival.
-Confidence intervals-ish: When they describe a given survival rate, they use that within the context of that hospital's predicted range. These "predicted ranges" are confidence intervals. They never call them confidence intervals because that phrase means nothing to a layperson.
-When computing the predicted range, they create multiple models of possible samples that could have been collected. So the sampling distribution of the sample mean.
-The blue bar is the 95th percentile. The gray bar is the 99.8th percentile.
-Again, data shouldn't be collected and left on a shelf or in a difficult-to-follow medical journal. It should be shared with the people who need it the most to make an informed decision about their child's health.